Income is the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability.
A popular writer writes about what people think. A wise writer offers them something to think about.
At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign’s court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral.
The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can.
The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two.
There would be far fewer accidents if we could only teach telephone poles to be more careful.
STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.
Alligator: The crocodile of America, superior in every detail to the crocodile of the effete monarchies of the Old World.
The god of the world’s leading religion.
A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul.
A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.
Example is better than following it.
PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.
A revolution is a violent change of mismanagement.
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
He laughs best who laughs least.
A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.
ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man’s choice.